The present invention relates to a display system advantageously applicable to a data display radio pager for displaying week-day and/or time by a plurality of elements or segments which may be implemented by light emitting diodes (LEDs).
A display having elements or segments implemented by LEDs is conventional and usually has, for example, seven segments assigned to each of an array of alphanumeric characters. To display, week-day, for example, three discrete display units may be arranged in an array and have their segments selectively turned on to represent characters "MON", "TUE", "WED" and so forth. Alternatively, dots may be arranged in a matrix of more than 5.times.7 bits per character so as to generate alphabets representative of week-day. To display time, four display units each having seven segments of LEDs may be arranged in an array and turned on independently of one another. For example, time "ten twenty-five" may be displayed as "10:25".
The conventional systems displaying week-day by three characters and time by four numerals are not desirable since they assign one display unit to each alphanumeric character and turn on only necessary ones of them. Specifically, a substantial space has to be allocated to week-day and time on a display. This is a critical drawback when it comes to, among others, a data display radio pager or similar apparatus which is required to display a message and other necessary data on a miniature display thereof. Further, since week-day, for example, needs an array of at least three characters, the system assigning dots of 5.times.7 bits to each character is not practicable unless more than 105 bits are assigned to display a week-day. This scales up an IC for driving the display and, therefore, increases the overall cost of the apparatus.